Wednesday November 1st 2006 - Novice 3, class #1

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Today was our first class and first time ever at a new-to-us agility school. The first task was a simple set of 6 fixed weaves. The weaves were set up with some strange looking, large wooden training blocks jutting out from the poles to encourage the proper path. Walter and I had never seen anything like that but the instructor said why not try them anyway; well that didn't work at all, Walter didn't recognize them as weaves and just ran right by them. So she pulled the blocks out of the way leaving just the regular 6 fixed weaves, and voila! Walter had no problems at all and did them correctly all 4 times, hooray! twice with me on his right and twice on his left, me standing lateral to the first pole and calling him from a sit stay. I had been wondering before the class how he would handle a different set of weaves since he's only ever weaved my wams and our practice field's weaves, so I'm really glad that he did them great! Other exercises included a review of the flip and some sequences that use a lead-out pivot, as well as a false turn to adjust the dog's path between a jump and the two ends of a C tunnel (use false turn to get them to go to the far entrance). Oh yeah, and we tried their teeter which is a bit different from the one we're used to. The instructor advised that I shouldn't say "easy" or anything to slow him down at the pivot, since speed is a crucial part of agility and the dog should be allowed to find his own way with the teeter; interesting advice and makes sense to me.